If I Cannot Swear in Heaven I Shall Not Stay There

Dear Quote Investigator: There are a set of statements attributed to the famous humorist Mark Twain about allowable behaviors in heaven:

If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.

If I cannot drink bourbon in heaven, then I shall not go.

If I can’t smoke cigars in heaven, I won’t stay there long.

Did Twain really make any of these remarks?

Quote Investigator: After Mark Twain’s death in 1910 Albert Bigelow Paine who was his friend became his literary executor with access to his papers and notebooks. In 1912 Paine published an important multi-volume biography of Twain.

In 1935 Paine published “Mark Twain’s Notebook” which included observations, ideas, and diary-like material from Twain’s collection of notebooks. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI: 1

If all men were rich, all men would be poor.

Let us swear while we may, for in heaven it will not be allowed.

Familiarity breeds contempt. How accurate that is. The reason we hold truth in such respect is because we have so little opportunity to get familiar with it.

If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.

Twain wrote down notions such as those above in his notebooks because he felt they might be useful later while composing a speech, essay, or story. Paine selected items from the notebooks for the 1935 publication.

QI has not yet found comments about smoking or drinking that match the template of the remark about swearing.

Below are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In 1912 “Mark Twain: A Biography: The Personal and Literary Life of Samuel Langhorne Clemens” included an anecdote from Paine about Twain delivering dictation to his stenographer Josephine Hobby: 2

He usually had a number of clippings or slips among the many books on the bed beside him from which he proposed to dictate each day, but he seldom could find the one most needed. Once, after a feverishly impatient search for a few moments, he invited Miss Hobby to leave the room temporarily, so, as he said, that he might swear. He got up and we began to explore the bed, his profanity increasing amazingly with each moment. It was an enormously large bed, and he began to disparage the size of it.

“One could lose a dog in this bed,” he declared.

Finally I suggested that he turn over the clipping which he had in his hand. He did so, and it proved to be the one he wanted. Its discovery was followed by a period of explosions, only half suppressed as to volume. Then he said:

“There ought to be a room in this house to swear in. It’s dangerous to have to repress an emotion like that.”

A moment later, when Miss Hobby returned, he was serene and happy again.

For many years the actor Hal Holbrook performed as Mark Twain in an acclaimed one-person show. A 1957 newspaper review noted that Holbrook employed the line about heaven: 3

He added, “If I cannot swear in heaven I shall not stay there.”

In remarking to his pastor, “I hope to be cremated,” he said the pastor replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that!”

In 1977 a review of a one-person show performed by Lowell Gleason ascribed a variant line that mentioned smoking to Mark Twain: 5

… Twain couldn’t resist presenting the dark side of life with a light turn of phrase: “If I can’t swear and smoke in Heaven, I won’t stay there long.”

In April 1996 a Usenet message in the newsgroup alt.smokers.cigars attributed a version of the remark about cigars to Twain, but the full statement was not enclosed with quotation marks: 6

. . . Twain’s actual quotes in which he stated that if there were no cigars in heaven, then “I shall not go.”

In November 1996 another Usenet message in alt.smokers.cigars credited Twain with the full variant statement: 7

In the words of Mark Twain “If I can not smoke cigars in heaven, Then I shall not go!”

In 2017 a cookbook ascribed a variant about drinking and smoking to Twain: 8

As Mark Twain so wryly put it, “If I cannot drink bourbon and smoke cigars in Heaven then I shall not go.”

In conclusion the 1935 citation provides solid evidence that Mark Twain wrote the quotation about swearing in one of his notebooks. QI has not yet found any strong support for ascribing the other variants to Twain.

2017, Corn: A Savor the South Cookbook by Tema Flanagan, Section: Corn and Southern Foodways, Unnumbered Page, The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill;. North Carolina. (Google Books Preview) ↩